I recently found a plugin for Eclipse made by IBM alphaworks called: "design pattern toolkit".

It implements MVC for automatic code generation. The model is a xml-like file describing anything (a DB schema for instance), the view is a set of templates (quite similar to a mix between XSL and velocity) and the controller is a file saying what to do (order of file generation, what files to generate, where to do it, etc).

I started working on it for generating the CRUD part of an application from an XML DB schema (schema, dbobjects, controllers, struts-config.xml, validation.xml, JSPs and unit tests).Once the templates and the controller are ready, it generates the whole app in seconds (and it actually works).

I've already done the schema, schema test and DBObjects. I'm currently working on the controllers.

If someone has good test cases for DBObjects and Controllers, and can post them, it would greatly help.

If someone wants to contribute I'll be glad to coordinate the project.

here is a sample on how looks a template file (for the schema in this case)

On 2004-07-01 06:51:46 a user 'rdavidovich' wrote:snip> > I recently found a plugin for Eclipse made by IBM alphaworks called: "design pattern toolkit".> > I started working on it for generating the CRUD part of an application from an XML DB schema (schema, dbobjects, controllers, struts-config.xml, validation.xml, JSPs and unit tests).> Once the templates and the controller are ready, it generates the whole app in seconds (and it actually works).> > I've already done the schema, schema test and DBObjects. I'm currently working on the controllers.> > If someone has good test cases for DBObjects and Controllers, and can post them, it would greatly help.

Sounds awesome. What you are doing by leveraging the design pattern toolkit is accomplishing in large part of what we wanted to accomplish with the Expresso Wizards project. (Projects link (in header) > Expresso Wizards > Documentation).

Perhaps you might be willing to lead this project and bring it to a first release state? Sounds like you are a good ways there. If so I guess the first thing we'd want to do is update the documentation there to reflect using design pattern toolkit and what you are doing. Let us know.

I'd love to..a first release could be just the pattern plus the xml shema definition.a second version could add a wizard-like interface.a third version could be a customized version of eclipse for developing expresso applications..